


Fellow Soldiers

by Elizabeth Perry (watersword)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 17:02:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1695770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watersword/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Perry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once basic was over, they could look each other in the eye. He had filled out, as all of the recruits had, and she thought, nonsensically, that it seemed even his lashes were thicker, longer, more robust. "Well," she said, and tried to smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fellow Soldiers

> ...precisely where the land touched water at high tide, where things came together but also separated. 
> 
> —Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried 

Once basic was over, they could look each other in the eye. He had filled out, as all of the recruits had, and she thought, nonsensically, that it seemed even his lashes were thicker, longer, more robust. "Well," she said, and tried to smile. 

Steven Grant Rogers, newly made Private First Class. She was not supposed to like him, not supposed to like any of the recruits; in six weeks, this would all be a memory and she would be in Afghanistan where she belonged, commanding a demolitions team. She didn't know where his orders were sending him, but it wasn't there. 

They were standing outside Hilton Field, while families and graduating soldiers made a ruckus and had feelings in public. It was a bright day, and she had to squint into the light to see the details of his face, the glint of stubble under his left ear, the spray of freckles next to his nose. 

This was the first time she had been trying to dredge up a smile for Rogers, rather than trying to tamp down a betraying fondness. She still outranked him, would probably always outrank him, but at least now they could speak to each other as fellow-soldiers, instead of Staff Sergeant and E-3. 

There had to be something like courage in her somewhere. Surely she could tell him that she was proud of him. That she was certain he would do well, whatever his orders were. That she wanted to count his eyelashes, wanted to look at his body as something to covet instead of control, wanted him to smile at her. 

"Buy you a beer in town," she said instead, and when he said, Yes, sure, of course, what time, where, it'd be my honor ma'am, she hoped she was hearing what he wanted to say: I like you too, thank you for not going easy on me, can I call you Peggy when we're off-duty. 

That night, at Rizzoli's, she didn't watch the door. She let herself fiddle with her suspenders, peel away the label on her beer bottle, because there was only so much self-control she could be expected to exert when not on-duty, and she kept her gaze on the row of bottles behind the bartender, and recited the list of pre-tour chores she needed to get through to herself. 

When Rogers slid onto the barstool next to her, she jumped a little, and covered by raising her bottle in his direction. "What'll it be, soldier?" she asked, and flipped her cap over where it was lying on the bar in front of her. She had folded twenties into the band before heading over, after she'd tapped a little lip balm on her mouth and the highest points of her cheekbones and along the fragile skin of her eyelids. Not makeup, not really, just a little gleam in the darkness. 

"Steve," he said, laying his hand flat on the bar surface, not touching her fingers, not quite. Close enough she could feel the warmth phantom in her fingers from the proximity of his skin, his blood, everything holding him together that she'd helped him build from the blocks he'd come to Fort Jackson with. "Please, ma'am, call me Steve now." 

"Okay," she said. "And I'm Peggy. Not Sergeant." 

"Nice to meet you, Peggy Carter," he said, and she was a sensible woman, a mature adult, a career officer, not a child sighing dreamily over a man's smile or the twinkle in his eye. 

But she already knew he would run the obstacle course all the way through, even knowing he would come in last. She had already watched him be scolded over the shine of his shoes. And there had been the nasty incident when Rodrigeuz had received a few too many letters from his high school buddy, and Rogers had stepped in to insist that it was no one's business what consenting adults did with their dicks in private, or with whom they did it. She had watched the whole thing from the closed-circuit security monitors, and had been on the verge of breaking it up herself when Rogers made it unnecessary. 

And that had been before he'd started putting on muscle like it was two-for-one at Walmart. 

"I don't even know if you drink," she said, twisting to face him fully. "I should've asked instead of just assuming, I'm sorry. There's so much I don't know about you." 

"I drink," he reassured her. "And I'm happy to answer any questions you have about my moral or physical fitness." 

She set her elbows on the bar and leaned forward. She knew perfectly well how much skin was framed by her suspenders and shown off above the scoop neckline of her tanktop. "I'm pretty sure I know enough about your physical fitness already," she told him. 

"Positive?" he asked, and it was nice to be certain that he was flirting. It was so nice to be wanted. 

"Well," she said, drawing the word out as if she had to think about it. "I suppose there would be no harm in another assessment." 

"You're a thorough woman," he agreed, and slid off his stool, holding one hand out for her to take. 

"If you're going to do a thing, do it well," she said, and put her cap back on her head as they left. "I hope I can count on your best effort, Private." 

"Didn't I tell you to call me Steve?" he asked. 

She grinned, unlocked her Explorer, and turned the key in the ignition before saying, "When I call you Steve, I'm hoping to be screaming it." 

* * *

There had been a part of her that had been hoping she would just get him out of her system. That it would be pleasant, and sweaty, and a mutually-agreeable one-time-only deal. Instead, six weeks later, she was standing outside the PX at Jackson, her duffle at her feet, rain turning the dusty ground to mud. Steve was standing at her left shoulder, his fingers laced together. It was breaking uniform code, but if she didn't keep her hands in her pockets, she was going to grabbing at him, feeling the short hairs at the nape of his neck and trying to pull him inside her bones and organs. 

"At least it'll be warmer in Afghanistan?" he suggested. 

"Until sundown. Then it's a freezing hellscape," she reminded him, and worried at a loose scrap of skin on her lower lip. Her team was saying their own goodbyes, and they all had to report in fifteen minutes, and there had to be something to say other than pleasantries. Promises to write. Promises to send packages of jelly beans and lip balm and earbuds. "Steve," she said. 

"Maybe I'll see you over there when I get deployed," he said, as if the prospect of a ten-month tour in the mountains outside Kabul was something to hope for. As if the prospect of seeing her there would make it worth it. 


End file.
